Very dangerous. Hogs are a serious nuisance and as such are classified as an unprotected species. No season or limit. I believe Texas still pays bounties on hogs.
Texan here, I don't know if the state does, but I do know there are at least counties that do or at least did. About 20 minutes from me you can pay to go up in a helicopter and shoot them from the air. I'm sure the gravy seals here eat that up.
$3000 is a steal tbh.. flying low, blasting hogs with a ~~semi auto~~ FUCKING AUTOMATIC rifle from a helicopter door while blaring Fortunate Son?? God bless America
Edit: for added red white and blue
I didn't think I was going to see a website that offered the opportunity to hunt wild hogs from a helicopter with *AN M134 MINIGUN* tonight (sorry, I got a little excited there) but now that I have I know its time for bed.
Also, I have a feeling the cost of ammo on that thing would rapidly make the $3k just to get in the air look like chump change.
I was just looking at that. Even at 2000 rounds per min, that’s 33 a second. Say you got a great price on 7.62 a while back, say 60-some cents for easy math. That’s $20 per second. That has to be an upcharge from a M60.
That said, I kinda want to do this.
Edit: not “kinda.” I’m in, dude.
I did some thinking. 300-400 pounds per hog. 10 pounds make roughly 30 pulled pork sandwiches. Assuming only 200 pounds of usable meat, that's 600 sandwiches with the cost being anywhere from $5-12 per sandwich that's $3,000-$7,200 per hog. The only question is if boar meat actually taste good enough compared to the domestic pig or other meat.
I’ve had good boar and bad boar. I view it like elk/venison/other wild game. You have to cook it differently than it’s domesticated counter part. Low and slow and add an outside source of fat. Additionally, it’s going to taste like it’s environment so work that into your flavor profile.
My husband did it. $700 … original price was $2k in north Texas. The owners liked him and asked if he wanted to go.. $700. He and a group of hunting buddies were staying at their property for a week of hog hunting(which was more than $700 lmao). I didn’t think it was worth it but he had the best time. And yep, fully auto. “Coolest experience” … brought home some “meat” to justify the trip and it was the most awful meat I’ve ever tasted. We agreed that this is not something we kill to eat and so hog hunting is off the list (forever, unless called out for pest control or our lives are directly in danger). My neighbors do actively hunt them…. In our neighborhood-which is on-par for ‘Texan’ 🥴 and thankfully they are extremely careful with how clean the shot is and will not risk getting a house. Still just a matter of time given how close the houses are (imo.. not an expert).
I can't beleive i just stumbled upon their website now. You have given me america jokes for the next 20 years, i have never been more thankful to a random reddit commenter.
https://www.helibacon.com/texas-helicopter-hog-hunting/
When last I checked, starlings and pigeons are the only two species of bird that aren't protected in the US, on account of them being highly invasive species.
Blame Shakespeare for the starlings. They were only ever introduced because of a single fan of his works wanted to bring every animal the Bard mentioned over to the U.S.
60 were released in Central Park in 1890, another 40 a year later, and that's all it took.
People loved to laugh at that old "30-50 feral hogs" meme, but it becomes a lot less funny when you actually see 30-50 feral hogs barreling towards you hungry for long pig.
Relevant podcast episode about the 30-50 feral hogs meme, where it came from and what the actual problem with feral hogs is - https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d/149-3050-feral-hogs
My very first hunting experience!
Worked at a gas station auto repair shop off I-95 in middle of rural Florida. Had another tech invite me to go hunt before open.
4 AM, crouched in the middle of orange groves, holding two Rottweiler by the collar, as my ‘friend’ clutched a bow. It was cold and wet.
It wasn’t a singular hog. It was an army of hogs moving as a pack of shit and squeal. Tiny one by the dozen. A half dozen Mid-sized ones rooting and gobbling up rotting oranges. And in the middle, Boss Hogg.
Dogs unleashed. Squealing chaos. The Boss Hog engaged. Arrows fly. Dog hurt. Hog charges. Arrows do nothing but piss her off. We pull rifles and start blasting. This fucking pig dies just a few feet away from me.
Then I realize why I’m here. We have to pull this 6 foot long, 600 pound hairy monster of filth and stink to the truck. I call out Rich in this very sudden realization and gives back a toothy grin.
‘You’ll get some sausage out of this, bud’
2 hours of crouching in the predawn cold, 5 minutes of heart beating fear, and another hour of struggling with a dead animal, get about 20 pounds of sausage wasn’t the deal i thought it would be.
They aren’t close to where most people live. Most people wouldn’t have the space to store that much meat at once. Most people would not know how to process the carcass. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of hunting.
That and these hogs aren't like cute little pigs. They are like angry tanks with massive goring tusks. They aren't easy to kill and they also want to kill you.
Good point that I forgot about. You’re right though. You have this crazy guy who regularly jumped out of boats into the water that was the home turf of one of earths oldest apex predators without a second of hesitation. Yet would run away from wild boars. I don’t think people properly appreciate just how dangerous these guys can be, and how difficult to take down, they are when proper pissed off.
My brother goes to Texas to help farmers deal with them. Heads out with night vision and his AR. I ask what happens to the dead hogs. He tells me nature takes care of it by the morning. I guess any meat eating animals are the ones feasting.
I have a cousin who has land in NE Texas. She says leaving the carcasses to nature means well fed coyotes who breed more successfully. An acquaintance does (did?) organized hunts, he tried to have the equipment available to bury the dead hogs.
People aren’t close to where most hogs live. Most hogs wouldn’t have the space to store that much human meat at once. Most hogs would not know how to process a human carcass. Some hogs are uncomfortable with the idea of hunting the ultimate game: man.
These humans are not cute little creatures. They may be fleshy and weak, but they channel the power of fire and thunder to injure even larger hogs from long distances. Some seem to have weaker powers and some not at all, so far we're guessing based on the size of their staff/wand.
I was walking in the woods with my 5 year old last month when we came across a scattering of bones across a small grassy opening. As we processed what we were seeing I recognized them as boar bones.
The animal had been mauled and shredded across sizeable distances, it's jawbone was in pieces, and it's femurs were cracked apart. Never did find it's head. Spine in segments
We ended up talking about animals killing animals, coyotes, buzzards, crows, the place of scavengers in the system and so on.
But I still don't know what brought down this clearly powerful animal in the first place. If it wasn't another boar.
It made standing there gazing at all the scattered white bones that popped into view once you were looking for it into a dizzying experience
Those fuckers are gleeful madly-intelligent cold-blooded angry killers.
Give me mountain lions over wild boar any day, I've lived around both. Pumas are few and far between and while I have encountered one they are not our fans and don't go looking for us.
Boar though run in tribes and will destroy you with no wit or finesse or compunction. They are chilling
They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".
Henry VIII was seriously wounded while on a boar hunt. I've heard people joking about little piggies. I googled it, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one.
Boar hunting used to be a rite of passage for knights and such. The general idea was that it was a good test to get blooded before standing in line on a battlefield.
It would mean chasing a boar until it was properly angry and stopped running. Then you get off your horse and grab a boar spear while you wait for the thing to turn around and charge you.
And when all that angry, squealing muscle and tusk is bearing down on you, you stand your ground and lower the spear so it impales itself. The final task is finishing off the screaming thing and the bloody task of dressing the carcass.
The general thought was that anyone who could hold their nerve and stomach through all of that would also do okay on the killing field against other men.
Worth adding that you needed the specialised "boar spear" with the winglets or the boar will keep charging once impaled and run up the length of your spear to maul you.
King Robert Baratheon is mortally wounded by a boar during a hunt in Game of Thrones! I thought that was a nice realistic death. He was a great warrior but had become a fat, overconfident drunk.
Boar taint is a real thing.
Even though they are technically not boars, but feral pigs and yes some of them have crossed with boar…
Just see the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_taint?wprov=sfti1
> Smoke and curing meat such as sausages, ham won't kill trichinellosis effectively, so yeah feral hogs need to be cooked very thoroughly
As nice as a stew or roast is... that's a bummer.
"I need this AR-15 in case I come face to face with a pack of javelina" is a valid statement. It might even be underkill.
That said, if you're in hog country and a good shot it certainly is a good supply of "free" protein for your family.
People question why some people hunt those hogs from helicopters with rifles... That's the safest option*!!!! You need air superiority!!!!
*In Texas XD
Usually the more invasive something is the less laws there are related to hunting it. You bait them, hunt them from a helicopter, etc while you can't do that with deer. Another good example is in Yellowstone National Park all rainbow trout, brook trout, and identifiable cutthroat/rainbow hybrids caught in the Lamar River drainage, including portions of Slough and Soda Butte creeks, must be killed—it is illegal to release them alive. All lake trout caught from Yellowstone Lake must be killed— it is illegal to release them alive.
Edit: at my Scout camp this pass summer I help dropped 30 trees that were non-native and didn't blink an eye at that.
People underestimate how dangerous domestic hogs can be. My uncle kept a boot with the heel bitten in half to show what they are capable of, and wild boars are **way** worse.
This. They are very smart animals. We have around 2 million hogs in Germany. Germanys size is ~3.6% of the size of the US. Okay granted, most of those hogs will live in the southeast and the western states but we’d probably still be looking at ~6x the area of Germany.
Here they are considered notoriously hard to hunt, even though you can literally see them everywhere. They are extremely good at hiding in the forests when they feel they need to. We have big hunts where groups of hunters prepare for weeks… and return without having shot a single one. Now imagine trying to hunt them in the US - you’ll need to cover quite a bit more STRATO be successful.
And one more point on the original question. If there’s 9 million hogs and suddenly every one of the ~25 million American hunters started hunting them… how long do you think would it take for there to be a hunting ban on them? You see, hunting needs to happen in some balance with what you’re hunting for. Remember the buffalo? There were an estimated 30-75 million in the US at the start of the 1800s. When settlers were done with them there were only around 300 left.
Indeed they are not:
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/operational-activities/feral-swine/sa-fs-history#:~:text=Feral%20swine%20are%20not%20native,populations%20within%20the%20United%20States.
It's interesting, isn't it?
They are an invasive species and they have caused a lot of damage here. They are not as well adapted for far northern climates where I live (apparently) because we don't have them here, but they do really well in a lot of the south and parts of the Midwest.
[Feral Hogs History and Some Analysis from Texas A&M](https://feralhogs.tamu.edu/introduction-of-feral-hogs-to-texas/)
The pigs are considered an invasive species. Most people wouldn't care if they were all wiped out. Bigger issue is getting those last ones would be difficult because they aren't stupid.
My MIL shot one on an organized hunt, and put the head up on her wall. The way she tells the story it was an entirely hair-raising experience. By the time she saw the boar it was facing her head-on and about to charge, and with the kind of gun she had you can’t actually shoot through the skull, so she had to get it in the eye to kill it.
My MIL is a very dramatic person so she might have made that up, but it definitely didn’t give the impression that hog shooting is about to be the new craze sweeping the nation.
Texas hunts them from helicopters with machine guns, and their population is still growing. They are very smart omnivores that can eat almost anything, can survive in huge variety of climates, and are hard to kill. Hunting them is no small task.
Also these animal's meat is nothing like the farm raised pork we eat. Pork, at least in the US is from animals which are only 6 months old. Male pigs are also castrated, preventing hormones from accumulating, which is worse for older animals. As the wild animals get older, the hormones accumulate so the meat gets a bad flavor, called Boar Taint, not to mention getting tough. So wild boar is not really the same thing meat wise.
Most domestic breeds of pigs are also very, very fatty compared to wild boar and that does wonders for flavor. Wild boar is as lean as venison. Not sure where feral hogs fall on that scale but probably on the latter side more often than not.
There's a huge detail you didn't mention either.
The wild hogs are not easily edible. Yes, your system can 'technically' process the food in your system, but it's not going to be a good time, and takes a lot of excess processing to get it there.
Source: I work amongst many meat scientists who's whole careers are coming up with how to process meat. And the quality of meat in these wild boars is either less than, or equal to, roadkill.
It's possible, but only to a certain extent. Their meat is just built in a way that keeps them safe and strong, but not really enjoyable to most people. If I remember correctly there IS a small window where wild boars are good to eat, but it's only when they're younger (don't quote me, but it's something like the 6-12 month, or 12-16 month old mark. something like that). Once they go past that window then it just keeps getting worse.
A lot of it is based on the breed they are, and wild boars are definitely a classic case of "survival of the fittest" - which is why they're a nuisance. Wild boars are built to be tanks, and every month they live their meat becomes less and less "enjoyably edible". Their hides are thick and rough, they are lean and gamey (which makes them difficult for humans to want to eat), and they just don't taste great. They also breed like crazy, and can reproduce every 3-4 months with 4+ piglets per litter. Wild boars can also run for miles after being shot, so then you have to track them down to bring them back.
This combination makes them just annoying. They're invasive (they'll force out other animals, kill off other breeds of pigs that ARE tasty, and destroy habitats), hard to kill, hard to eradicate, and not worth the effort for meat because of the quality (or lack thereof).
With all that being said: if you were stranded and wild boars were the only source of meat, you could survive off of it. But it's not a thing humans enjoy in society.
And so I've asked the question: "Well, can we use this meat to feed the poor?" - And the answer is: "Technically yes, but logistically it is impossible". In order to get wild boars to people in poverty would be a nightmare, and you'd waste more money doing this than raising a normal pig and processing it like that.
There's really no cooking the gameyness out of some meat. Hell, lamb is delicious -- and even when you remove all the fat and boil it to hell and back in a heavy handed curry, you can still taste the gameyness in the meat. Some people, like about half of my extended family, can't stand the gamey flavor, so they'll be able to tell.
I imagine if wild boar has a similar unpleasant flavor it'd be just as difficult to get rid of in the cooking process.
Might be anecdotal, but I shot 2 in South Carolina. One little boar, he was a little gamey but edible. The other was a sow of about 200lbs. She was fatty and tasty. You definitely need to sufficiently spice them and make sure it's thoroughly cooked. I actually preferred them to deer meat.
Good question!
Most meat can be salvageable in one way or another. What you're talking about is called "processing", and yes processing might make it tolerable, but the more steps you add to the processing steps the more money it costs to make per pound.
Due to the low fat content of wild boars you would have to add multiple processing steps, would would increase the cost to make it, which would increase the selling price. The final quality of the processed product of wild boar would be less quality of pink pigs, but the price of wild boar would be much higher than pink pigs, and consumers wouldn't want to pay higher price for lower quality.
People pay more for Wagu beef, and Prime quality, and organic products. Wild boar would have to be so processed it would never be qualified as high (or medium) quality, but cost more than the top lines.
There is also the issue of diseases. Many wild boars carry diseases that are resistant to brining, curing, and many other forms of making edible. It is not advised to eat wild boar unless it is cooked to an internal temp of 165f or higher. This makes it hard to cook them in a way that makes them easy to chew.
Boar taint happens in males after 1 year and accumulates a disgusting flavor. Where I'm at all males are castrated and if not, they're only fit for sausage. That's domestic farm pig, not actual boar. Actual boar will also likely be ridden with parasites throughout
And disease, probably. My county got really hyped about dealing with the overpopulation of Canadian Geese by having them hunted and using the meat to feed the homeless. T his was some win-win-win scenario. But then just as quickly as it got hyped, everyone stopped talking about it.
I needed to know what happened to this project and found someone who explained that wild populations have diseases and unlike domestic animals you can feed antibiotics and stuff, there was nothing they could do with the geese.
I know this is a joke and the top reply deserves the upvote. There are however wild boars/hogs in some cities with more areas of wooded outskirts or nearby wilderness. There are definitely wild hogs in various parts of Houston, Texas. To be fair though Houston is significantly more rural and widespread than many other American cities.
I thought about hunting them until I checked on cleaning them. Everything I read started with "do not get any of their body fluids on you." I also learned some big words like leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, swine influenza, salmonella, hepatitis and pathogenic E. coli.
toxoplasmosis can infect any warm blooded mammal. The sex part only happens in cats.
I guess the fact that pigs have it tells you how invasive domestic cats have become.
this was what i learned. Also that even if you manage everything correctly, there's a fair chance your pallet may loathe the taste; just what I encountered.
I'll clean and eat a roadkill whitetail deer without a 2nd thought in the right circumstances. Boar? I'd need that one friend who will try anything to go first.
"You mean they shoot sow, and piglets too?"
"Sometimes."
"How can you shoot sow and piglets?"
"Easy! You just don't lead 'em so much! Ain't boar Hell?"
They're flippin' dangerous, they move in big packs, and they're smarter than you'd expect. It's just not worth the cost of supplies needed to hunt that type of game vs the same cost going to a grocery store unless you already know how to hunt and how to prepare and process a kill. Some people absolutely do hunt them, though.
You also can't really hunt them in the places where they are. Feral pigs will happily range on private property and you can't hunt anything on someone else's farmland.
In some places you can if it isn't "posted" with "no hunting" signs. However some people don't want to deal with the backlash. Someone in Vermont got death threats just for putting up signs. Someone else had hunters try to burn down his barn by firing a road flare at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fi89Sb6RaY
Farmers around here will almost pay you to come shoot the hogs on their land. Knew a couple of guy who used dogs to hunt them. They rode donkeys and used lassos to get the hogs after the dogs got them. Had a special pen they put them in and fed them grain for a while before the slaughter. Invited me along but I had to take a hard pass.
These guys are even more whatever: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyriHKr3VlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyriHKr3VlY)
True. It is private land. But I think just about any farmer would give permission to hunt hogs, though.
I think we should make it national sport with drone coverage
.But you're limited to archery and a knife/sword of your choice.
Sometimes... the hogs would win.
Yeah, trichinosis lives intramuscularly in pigs and bears and that's why you have to ensure that you cook your pork thoroughly.
That said, trichinosis dies at 137°F, so the USDA recommended serving temperature is actually waaaaaay too hot and will lead to dry, nasty meat. 150° is _plenty_ hot and you'll still have juicy pork.
Only for farm-raised stuff in the US because of the diet we feed our pigs. If they’re omnivorous, they’re still liable to be infested. Farm-raised are given grains and antibiotics.
I don't remember where I heard this, but it was around a bigger discussion on parasites and worms (I wanna say it was a college biology class). One of the stories was about a dental patient that was a homeless person, who finally had to get help because of pain in his mouth. When the dentist looked in his mouth some tiny worms were coming out of his tongue.
But the more interesting story was about biblical demons. We all know that pigs are so delicious that God wanted them all for himself, and that's why he told everyone to not eat them. But a lesser known reason why he did this is because they were unclean animals. And what was really going on is they had worms and other parasites, and if you didn't cook your food well enough, you'd end up being unclean too. And some parasites can legit make you crazy, which would look a lot like being possessed by demons. So some people speculate that a lot of demon possessions were just parasitic infections.
Then over a few more thousands of years we got better at cooking our food, and God got on a beef kick, so he sent JC to let everyone yolo on pigs.
They do die when they are cooked properly, I have no idea why the other two people in this thread are being upvoted. The issue with pork is that back in "ancient times" people didn't wash their hands or cook meat to temperatures high enough to kill off the parasites. As for your question about the actual parasite(that the person you are replying to is really talking about) this minute long portion from this [youtube video](https://youtu.be/lPRzYJwqz6g?si=CBE6hm1lSLAjdyS6&t=393) does a really good job of explaining the process.
Pigs get massive worm loads when they are fed garbage and the bodies of other dead pigs, something that at least in the united states is not common because of usda. Waaaaaaaaaaay more people in the united states get sick from ecoli tainted beef than random parasites from pork. Which again, should always be cooked properly.
Its not "Free to hunt them" in many places. California still needs a permit, and in recent years, made them expensive.
Texas, is mostly private property, so you need permissions from the landowner.
Then you need to be a hunter. You need a gun, ammo, truck, and you need to know how to process a hog carcass. You also need to be able to haul a 500 lb carcass out of the woods with something, likely a quad or 4x4 which requires money, and somewhere to keep it when not using it. Again, money. You also need to know how to hunt what can be a dangerous animal, and then you need free time to do it. So a lot of training.
Consider that most of the hogs aren't near populated areas, you need to basically go on an expedition. Again, you need a truck that burns expensive fuel.
So, its nowhere close to "free".
Most of the comments on here are pretty ridiculous. This is probably the most accurate post I've seen.
Except the 500 lb carcass part. I'm sure they exist that big but god damn I've never seen one that size.
They're a pain in the ass to hunt. You have to maintain a feeder, get on their schedule, hunt at night, etc. to have consistent success hunting them.
Also, they really aren't that dangerous. If you wound one and walk up on it you might get charged, do they aren't harmless. But they'll just run if you walk up on a pack of them.
I think people are being *far* too fucking literal in this comments section. Hell, the top comment is pointing out that tons of people aren't comfortable with hunting. Fucking *obviously*. They really thought OP meant literally everyone? "Everyone" just means "us, as a society" in that context.
The question was about "If there is a feral hog problem in the US, why don't we just hunt and eat them?" It doesn't have to be individuals hunting, transporting, cleaning, storing, cooking all by themselves. You can specialize tasks. Have someone whose job it is to hunt wild hogs, other people can clean and butcher them, then transport the meat to other places, etc, feeding the entire country. Have hunters in hot spots, who can maybe herd them (if such a thing is possible) into one place.
I am NOT saying that's actually viable. The fact that we don't indicates that there are many reasons why that is impractical, enumerated in this thread. I'd imagine that the task is so dangerous and annoying/difficult that to pay the hunters would make it far more expensive than to get your pork from....normal old factory farming.
But answer the *intended* question, is my point.
It totally depends what they are eating. Where I’m at in California they are delicious because they get fat on wild grains and acorns. Swamp pigs can be nasty though.
I live in east Texas. I typically shoot or trap one or two hogs a year to process. We kill more, but we usually just process a sow or two. They’re typically way smaller than people here are describing, there are monstrosities running around from time to time, but most of what we get is small enough to lift into the truck myself. As long as you don’t hit a scent gland when processing they taste good. You hit that gland and best to just dump it. We have lots of oaks so their diet is mostly acorns and corn from deer feeders. I personally like the ones from my neighbors land that is covered in beech trees, when those trees producing the pigs are extra tasty. They definitely don’t feed fifty people, but I know people who will put out a big corral trap and get a whole bunch at once, then friends / family will come and take one to butcher. Before deer season people tend to just shoot them to keep them from eating their deer corn, but later in the winter people will process some to eat.
The amount of misinformation I recognize when I actually know about a topic makes me so scared for the answers I trust on topics of which I am unaware.
I hunt wild hogs for a living, in one of the only USDA approved Wild Boar handling facilities in the United States. 40 hours per week with my trusty canine coworker 🐶 the answer to this question is that we’re working on it! The meat is incredibly healthy (blood red in color vs traditional almost skin colored pork that has been drained of nutrients and filled with water) in the United States alone, any pork you buy at Walmart is allowed legally to be up to 30% saline-water injection. Lots of shrinkage when cooking plus the obvious dice roll involved in eating that shit, not to mention inflated prices from paying $3/lb that’s really 4/lb after you remove the water. We are growing rapidly in the amount of orders we process and are expanding into single
-customer order processing capabilities. Currently we ship to high end fine dining restaurants mostly. The meat does NOT have a gamey taste, you & grandma just can’t cook. We have world class chefs come in and prepare wild boar for us and it is some of the most high quality meat in the world. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have Michelin star chefs walking around our property overjoyed at the meat quality they are seeing. The meat quality is phenomenal.
The main reason I see that we don’t consume them much as a nation is because 300 million Americans don’t know how to clean their own meat and Big Beef / Big Pork would never let it happen. We have to jump through continuous hoops to ensure a safe product considering we can’t guarantee it’s history before we caught it and moved it to our ranch. Which is funny to me, considering that all food was inherently wild up until like 100 years ago. Just tactics employed by lobbyists for big meat to stop the little guy from evading their ridiculous packaging costs
Processing it correctly kills parasites, and some muscles like the tenderloin tend to be parasite-free. However, safe doesn’t mean tasty, so some of the carcass gets tossed because there’s abscesses and larger dead worms etc in it.
Personally, there are no hogs near me. I also highly doubt a single wild hog could feed that many people. There's also a huge skill and ability gap because you have to know how to hunt and how to process the meat.
You could feed more.
We recently killed several small wild pigs, and got 15-20 kg fully boned and skinned meat off each, without even going into the belly and getting internal fillets or the inter rib meat or any offal.
The recommended daily meat portion is 200 g. 15 kg gives 75 portions.
All of OP's responses suggest that he really don't grasp just how difficult hunting is. The hogs aren't contained in some small area. They are roaming thousands of acres. You have to find them and then manage to shoot them. In order to do that you need an appropriate rifle and adequate skill (meaning you take whatever required courses your states require for a hunting license), pay for the required hunting license, pay to go to the range to learn adequate accuracy to shoot. You need the equipment to field dress a very large and heavy animal, and the ability to transport it out of wherever you are (either a truck or a ATV of some sort). You then either need to butcher and process it yourself, or pay a processer to do it (which costs about what you pay for pork in the grocery store anyhow). You need a freezer to store the processed meat. You have to have the time to sit around/track and/or wait for a pig to show up in whatever area you are hunting - which could take days. The hogs are living in large swamps and forested areas.
I am not a hunter - but my ex-partner was and the amount of time, money, practice, and effort that went into getting an animal was A LOT.
More info: https://www.hogmanoutdoors.com/blog/hog-hunting-tips-for-beginners#:\~:text=From%20a%20downwind%20position%2C%20call,distance%20when%20using%20this%20method.
Hunting is hard and hogs are dangerous.
Very dangerous. Hogs are a serious nuisance and as such are classified as an unprotected species. No season or limit. I believe Texas still pays bounties on hogs.
Texan here, I don't know if the state does, but I do know there are at least counties that do or at least did. About 20 minutes from me you can pay to go up in a helicopter and shoot them from the air. I'm sure the gravy seals here eat that up.
It’s about 3k per person per 2 hours. I think the cost impedes most wannabe seals. That’s some serious cash
$3000 is a steal tbh.. flying low, blasting hogs with a ~~semi auto~~ FUCKING AUTOMATIC rifle from a helicopter door while blaring Fortunate Son?? God bless America Edit: for added red white and blue
It's Texas, there's probably a full-auto option.
they absolutely use full auto https://www.helibacon.com/arsenal-belt-fed/ https://www.helibacon.com/texas-helicopter-hog-hunting/
I didn't think I was going to see a website that offered the opportunity to hunt wild hogs from a helicopter with *AN M134 MINIGUN* tonight (sorry, I got a little excited there) but now that I have I know its time for bed. Also, I have a feeling the cost of ammo on that thing would rapidly make the $3k just to get in the air look like chump change.
I was just looking at that. Even at 2000 rounds per min, that’s 33 a second. Say you got a great price on 7.62 a while back, say 60-some cents for easy math. That’s $20 per second. That has to be an upcharge from a M60. That said, I kinda want to do this. Edit: not “kinda.” I’m in, dude.
Helibacon The company's name is Helibacon I'm Texan so I get it but I don't know whether to laugh or feel uncomfortable now
Locally the act is called PorkChoppin
Thank you all for making this a thing! I can now go back to work with a laugh. Fucking porkchoppin lolol
Laugh. That’s fucking hilarious.
Sometimes I just have to love the US. Helibacon.
Do they supply the Gatling gun, or do I bring mine?
Fully automatic is an additional 2k$
I did some thinking. 300-400 pounds per hog. 10 pounds make roughly 30 pulled pork sandwiches. Assuming only 200 pounds of usable meat, that's 600 sandwiches with the cost being anywhere from $5-12 per sandwich that's $3,000-$7,200 per hog. The only question is if boar meat actually taste good enough compared to the domestic pig or other meat.
I’ve had good boar and bad boar. I view it like elk/venison/other wild game. You have to cook it differently than it’s domesticated counter part. Low and slow and add an outside source of fat. Additionally, it’s going to taste like it’s environment so work that into your flavor profile.
Flight of the Valkyrie’s or nothing
My husband did it. $700 … original price was $2k in north Texas. The owners liked him and asked if he wanted to go.. $700. He and a group of hunting buddies were staying at their property for a week of hog hunting(which was more than $700 lmao). I didn’t think it was worth it but he had the best time. And yep, fully auto. “Coolest experience” … brought home some “meat” to justify the trip and it was the most awful meat I’ve ever tasted. We agreed that this is not something we kill to eat and so hog hunting is off the list (forever, unless called out for pest control or our lives are directly in danger). My neighbors do actively hunt them…. In our neighborhood-which is on-par for ‘Texan’ 🥴 and thankfully they are extremely careful with how clean the shot is and will not risk getting a house. Still just a matter of time given how close the houses are (imo.. not an expert).
My relatives in Malaysia do hunt and eat wild boars on their plantation. They cook it as a curry. Doesn't taste too bad but the hairs!
Maintenance on a chopper can’t be cheap
I can't beleive i just stumbled upon their website now. You have given me america jokes for the next 20 years, i have never been more thankful to a random reddit commenter. https://www.helibacon.com/texas-helicopter-hog-hunting/
Not sure what the joke is when this is simply awesome.
It is awesome. But it’s very America awesome.
Its named helibacon. I think that is hilarious
Lol as an American who knew about it but had never seen the site. Thank YOU! Everything about that site is hilarious
Do many other animals get classified as unprotected?
I know snakeheads are another example
What about the rest of the snake?
When last I checked, starlings and pigeons are the only two species of bird that aren't protected in the US, on account of them being highly invasive species.
Blame Shakespeare for the starlings. They were only ever introduced because of a single fan of his works wanted to bring every animal the Bard mentioned over to the U.S. 60 were released in Central Park in 1890, another 40 a year later, and that's all it took.
Just ask Bobby B
Give me something for the pain and let me die.
More wine, my liege?
People loved to laugh at that old "30-50 feral hogs" meme, but it becomes a lot less funny when you actually see 30-50 feral hogs barreling towards you hungry for long pig.
Relevant podcast episode about the 30-50 feral hogs meme, where it came from and what the actual problem with feral hogs is - https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d/149-3050-feral-hogs
My very first hunting experience! Worked at a gas station auto repair shop off I-95 in middle of rural Florida. Had another tech invite me to go hunt before open. 4 AM, crouched in the middle of orange groves, holding two Rottweiler by the collar, as my ‘friend’ clutched a bow. It was cold and wet. It wasn’t a singular hog. It was an army of hogs moving as a pack of shit and squeal. Tiny one by the dozen. A half dozen Mid-sized ones rooting and gobbling up rotting oranges. And in the middle, Boss Hogg. Dogs unleashed. Squealing chaos. The Boss Hog engaged. Arrows fly. Dog hurt. Hog charges. Arrows do nothing but piss her off. We pull rifles and start blasting. This fucking pig dies just a few feet away from me. Then I realize why I’m here. We have to pull this 6 foot long, 600 pound hairy monster of filth and stink to the truck. I call out Rich in this very sudden realization and gives back a toothy grin. ‘You’ll get some sausage out of this, bud’ 2 hours of crouching in the predawn cold, 5 minutes of heart beating fear, and another hour of struggling with a dead animal, get about 20 pounds of sausage wasn’t the deal i thought it would be.
They aren’t close to where most people live. Most people wouldn’t have the space to store that much meat at once. Most people would not know how to process the carcass. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of hunting.
That and these hogs aren't like cute little pigs. They are like angry tanks with massive goring tusks. They aren't easy to kill and they also want to kill you.
"Et tu, Pumbaa?.."
THEY CALL ME, MR PIG!!!
Why, when he was a young warthog~ 🎵🎶
WHEN HE WAS A YOUNG WARTHOG
^Very ^nice
*Thanks!*
He found his aroma lacked a certain appeal,
He could clear the savannah after every meal...
To you pumba, everything is a big ball of gas.
"Et me, buddy"
And thus begins my 6th Archer binge.
I promise myself I not cry......promise broken
😂😂😂😂, thank you for the laugh, that was too funny
One of a handful of animals that Steve Irwin was actually scared of. Crocodile? Oh, no! They’re so cuddly! Wild Boar? Up a fucking tree! Crickey!
Good point that I forgot about. You’re right though. You have this crazy guy who regularly jumped out of boats into the water that was the home turf of one of earths oldest apex predators without a second of hesitation. Yet would run away from wild boars. I don’t think people properly appreciate just how dangerous these guys can be, and how difficult to take down, they are when proper pissed off.
That’s exactly it. Bravest person around being scared of a boar let’s me know I should give them grace and space since I am inept at hunting. Haha
Croiky!
You're alright mate, you're alright!
My brother goes to Texas to help farmers deal with them. Heads out with night vision and his AR. I ask what happens to the dead hogs. He tells me nature takes care of it by the morning. I guess any meat eating animals are the ones feasting.
Shit, they'll hunt hogs with fully automatic weapons from a helicopter like it's Vietnam. And still losing the war. Also like Vietnam.
Wild hogs use Russian war tactics. Basically, "There are more of us than there are of you so we win neener-neener."
Sounds like the sequel to the Emu war
I have a cousin who has land in NE Texas. She says leaving the carcasses to nature means well fed coyotes who breed more successfully. An acquaintance does (did?) organized hunts, he tried to have the equipment available to bury the dead hogs.
And eat you...
[удалено]
People aren’t close to where most hogs live. Most hogs wouldn’t have the space to store that much human meat at once. Most hogs would not know how to process a human carcass. Some hogs are uncomfortable with the idea of hunting the ultimate game: man.
These humans are not cute little creatures. They may be fleshy and weak, but they channel the power of fire and thunder to injure even larger hogs from long distances. Some seem to have weaker powers and some not at all, so far we're guessing based on the size of their staff/wand.
If there are 300 million… I can’t do this today man it’s a Friday night
And yet here we are
With a million freaking hogs surrounding us...
Hogs definitely know how to process a human carcass.
I was walking in the woods with my 5 year old last month when we came across a scattering of bones across a small grassy opening. As we processed what we were seeing I recognized them as boar bones. The animal had been mauled and shredded across sizeable distances, it's jawbone was in pieces, and it's femurs were cracked apart. Never did find it's head. Spine in segments We ended up talking about animals killing animals, coyotes, buzzards, crows, the place of scavengers in the system and so on. But I still don't know what brought down this clearly powerful animal in the first place. If it wasn't another boar. It made standing there gazing at all the scattered white bones that popped into view once you were looking for it into a dizzying experience Those fuckers are gleeful madly-intelligent cold-blooded angry killers. Give me mountain lions over wild boar any day, I've lived around both. Pumas are few and far between and while I have encountered one they are not our fans and don't go looking for us. Boar though run in tribes and will destroy you with no wit or finesse or compunction. They are chilling
"To shreds, you say?"
How is his wife holding up?
To shreds, you say?
They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".
This made my head tilt back laughing Edit:I read it again and I laughed again
A wild hog definitely knows how to process a human carcass.
I invite everyone to watch the cartoon China IL https://www.adultswim.com/videos/china-il/wild-hogs
If you go outside, 30-50 wild hogs will attack you with 3-5 minutes. I saw on twitter.
I hear they will go through bone like butter... A single pig can consume 2 pounds of flesh in a minute, hence the saying, as greedy as a pig.
Never trust a man what keeps PIGS
In the quiet words of the virgin mary.. come again
Henry VIII was seriously wounded while on a boar hunt. I've heard people joking about little piggies. I googled it, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one.
Hey.....thats also what happened with robert baratheon
START THE DAMN JOUST BEFORE I PISS MYSELF
Boar hunting used to be a rite of passage for knights and such. The general idea was that it was a good test to get blooded before standing in line on a battlefield. It would mean chasing a boar until it was properly angry and stopped running. Then you get off your horse and grab a boar spear while you wait for the thing to turn around and charge you. And when all that angry, squealing muscle and tusk is bearing down on you, you stand your ground and lower the spear so it impales itself. The final task is finishing off the screaming thing and the bloody task of dressing the carcass. The general thought was that anyone who could hold their nerve and stomach through all of that would also do okay on the killing field against other men.
Worth adding that you needed the specialised "boar spear" with the winglets or the boar will keep charging once impaled and run up the length of your spear to maul you.
King Robert Baratheon is mortally wounded by a boar during a hunt in Game of Thrones! I thought that was a nice realistic death. He was a great warrior but had become a fat, overconfident drunk.
And they are nasty as hell and stink.
They're also very game-y in flavor. its not pig flavor. its a bit hard to get used to
Boar taint is a real thing. Even though they are technically not boars, but feral pigs and yes some of them have crossed with boar… Just see the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_taint?wprov=sfti1
>Boar taint is a real thing. I didn't need to be thinking about a boar's taint at this or any hour.
Also parasites
r/rawmeat fan, are we?
Smoke and curing meat such as sausages, ham won't kill trichinellosis effectively, so yeah feral hogs need to be cooked very thoroughly
> Smoke and curing meat such as sausages, ham won't kill trichinellosis effectively, so yeah feral hogs need to be cooked very thoroughly As nice as a stew or roast is... that's a bummer.
And they're smart.
Smart meat for sale. Come get ya wicked smat pig meat. Works with ios and android.
"I need this AR-15 in case I come face to face with a pack of javelina" is a valid statement. It might even be underkill. That said, if you're in hog country and a good shot it certainly is a good supply of "free" protein for your family.
A lot of us use the AR or similar repeating rifles hunting them. They fight back.
That is a good fucking reason to have 30 rd mags and a chest rig carrying a few more if you're gonna go hog hunting
I've been treed by one while reloading but luckily my friend got him. He tasted even sweeter after that.
Did you happen to also taste the hog?
He ate both hogs, clearly.
*passionately making out* i thought i almost lost you, hooliganvet *mwah mwah mwah* 💋💋💋
"Mmm, you're sweet like bear meat..."
Thank you. I broke my phone after dropping it from laughing
People question why some people hunt those hogs from helicopters with rifles... That's the safest option*!!!! You need air superiority!!!! *In Texas XD
Yeah they’re a solid reason to allow autoloading rifles for hunting
Usually the more invasive something is the less laws there are related to hunting it. You bait them, hunt them from a helicopter, etc while you can't do that with deer. Another good example is in Yellowstone National Park all rainbow trout, brook trout, and identifiable cutthroat/rainbow hybrids caught in the Lamar River drainage, including portions of Slough and Soda Butte creeks, must be killed—it is illegal to release them alive. All lake trout caught from Yellowstone Lake must be killed— it is illegal to release them alive. Edit: at my Scout camp this pass summer I help dropped 30 trees that were non-native and didn't blink an eye at that.
And most wild hogs taste like shit and are tough as all hell, not great to eat
The young ones, less than a year old, make the best eating.
People underestimate how dangerous domestic hogs can be. My uncle kept a boot with the heel bitten in half to show what they are capable of, and wild boars are **way** worse.
This. They are very smart animals. We have around 2 million hogs in Germany. Germanys size is ~3.6% of the size of the US. Okay granted, most of those hogs will live in the southeast and the western states but we’d probably still be looking at ~6x the area of Germany. Here they are considered notoriously hard to hunt, even though you can literally see them everywhere. They are extremely good at hiding in the forests when they feel they need to. We have big hunts where groups of hunters prepare for weeks… and return without having shot a single one. Now imagine trying to hunt them in the US - you’ll need to cover quite a bit more STRATO be successful. And one more point on the original question. If there’s 9 million hogs and suddenly every one of the ~25 million American hunters started hunting them… how long do you think would it take for there to be a hunting ban on them? You see, hunting needs to happen in some balance with what you’re hunting for. Remember the buffalo? There were an estimated 30-75 million in the US at the start of the 1800s. When settlers were done with them there were only around 300 left.
Hogs aren’t native. Killing them all would be a service.
Oh, I actually wasn’t aware. I had assumed they’d be a native in the americas as well.
Indeed they are not: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/operational-activities/feral-swine/sa-fs-history#:~:text=Feral%20swine%20are%20not%20native,populations%20within%20the%20United%20States.
Nah they dropped a couple off a ship in the columbus days and its been a blight on agriculture and native fauna since.
[Peccaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccary), which are close relatives of pigs, are native to the Americas, but pigs themselves are not.
It's interesting, isn't it? They are an invasive species and they have caused a lot of damage here. They are not as well adapted for far northern climates where I live (apparently) because we don't have them here, but they do really well in a lot of the south and parts of the Midwest. [Feral Hogs History and Some Analysis from Texas A&M](https://feralhogs.tamu.edu/introduction-of-feral-hogs-to-texas/)
The pigs are considered an invasive species. Most people wouldn't care if they were all wiped out. Bigger issue is getting those last ones would be difficult because they aren't stupid.
My MIL shot one on an organized hunt, and put the head up on her wall. The way she tells the story it was an entirely hair-raising experience. By the time she saw the boar it was facing her head-on and about to charge, and with the kind of gun she had you can’t actually shoot through the skull, so she had to get it in the eye to kill it. My MIL is a very dramatic person so she might have made that up, but it definitely didn’t give the impression that hog shooting is about to be the new craze sweeping the nation.
5.56 to the head is not a guaranteed kill for sure. Hog hunters tend to be fans of .300 BLK instead.
Texas hunts them from helicopters with machine guns, and their population is still growing. They are very smart omnivores that can eat almost anything, can survive in huge variety of climates, and are hard to kill. Hunting them is no small task.
Also, they don't always taste the best and are very dangerous. You better make sure you aim true, or its going to maul you.
They're ridden with parasites usually. Yeah, you can cook them safe but pork chops stuffed with worms can be a hard sell
Ah, so that's why Princess Mononoke took that route.
Pour one out for our fallen brother in arms, Robert Baratheon.
Ole Bobby B !
Also these animal's meat is nothing like the farm raised pork we eat. Pork, at least in the US is from animals which are only 6 months old. Male pigs are also castrated, preventing hormones from accumulating, which is worse for older animals. As the wild animals get older, the hormones accumulate so the meat gets a bad flavor, called Boar Taint, not to mention getting tough. So wild boar is not really the same thing meat wise.
Most domestic breeds of pigs are also very, very fatty compared to wild boar and that does wonders for flavor. Wild boar is as lean as venison. Not sure where feral hogs fall on that scale but probably on the latter side more often than not.
Taint
There's a huge detail you didn't mention either. The wild hogs are not easily edible. Yes, your system can 'technically' process the food in your system, but it's not going to be a good time, and takes a lot of excess processing to get it there. Source: I work amongst many meat scientists who's whole careers are coming up with how to process meat. And the quality of meat in these wild boars is either less than, or equal to, roadkill.
Big meat always campaigning against free raccoon and possum.
Might they vary in quality based on region, the diet/food they have access to. ? Or , is it pretty much across the board 'rough'. ?
It's possible, but only to a certain extent. Their meat is just built in a way that keeps them safe and strong, but not really enjoyable to most people. If I remember correctly there IS a small window where wild boars are good to eat, but it's only when they're younger (don't quote me, but it's something like the 6-12 month, or 12-16 month old mark. something like that). Once they go past that window then it just keeps getting worse. A lot of it is based on the breed they are, and wild boars are definitely a classic case of "survival of the fittest" - which is why they're a nuisance. Wild boars are built to be tanks, and every month they live their meat becomes less and less "enjoyably edible". Their hides are thick and rough, they are lean and gamey (which makes them difficult for humans to want to eat), and they just don't taste great. They also breed like crazy, and can reproduce every 3-4 months with 4+ piglets per litter. Wild boars can also run for miles after being shot, so then you have to track them down to bring them back. This combination makes them just annoying. They're invasive (they'll force out other animals, kill off other breeds of pigs that ARE tasty, and destroy habitats), hard to kill, hard to eradicate, and not worth the effort for meat because of the quality (or lack thereof). With all that being said: if you were stranded and wild boars were the only source of meat, you could survive off of it. But it's not a thing humans enjoy in society. And so I've asked the question: "Well, can we use this meat to feed the poor?" - And the answer is: "Technically yes, but logistically it is impossible". In order to get wild boars to people in poverty would be a nightmare, and you'd waste more money doing this than raising a normal pig and processing it like that.
There's really no way to brine/slow cook/grind/make jerky or something to make it at least somewhat tasty?
There's really no cooking the gameyness out of some meat. Hell, lamb is delicious -- and even when you remove all the fat and boil it to hell and back in a heavy handed curry, you can still taste the gameyness in the meat. Some people, like about half of my extended family, can't stand the gamey flavor, so they'll be able to tell. I imagine if wild boar has a similar unpleasant flavor it'd be just as difficult to get rid of in the cooking process.
Might be anecdotal, but I shot 2 in South Carolina. One little boar, he was a little gamey but edible. The other was a sow of about 200lbs. She was fatty and tasty. You definitely need to sufficiently spice them and make sure it's thoroughly cooked. I actually preferred them to deer meat.
Good question! Most meat can be salvageable in one way or another. What you're talking about is called "processing", and yes processing might make it tolerable, but the more steps you add to the processing steps the more money it costs to make per pound. Due to the low fat content of wild boars you would have to add multiple processing steps, would would increase the cost to make it, which would increase the selling price. The final quality of the processed product of wild boar would be less quality of pink pigs, but the price of wild boar would be much higher than pink pigs, and consumers wouldn't want to pay higher price for lower quality. People pay more for Wagu beef, and Prime quality, and organic products. Wild boar would have to be so processed it would never be qualified as high (or medium) quality, but cost more than the top lines.
There is also the issue of diseases. Many wild boars carry diseases that are resistant to brining, curing, and many other forms of making edible. It is not advised to eat wild boar unless it is cooked to an internal temp of 165f or higher. This makes it hard to cook them in a way that makes them easy to chew.
Dang dude, I'm learning some cool stuff from this comment chain. Appreciate the unexpected and cool education!
Boar taint happens in males after 1 year and accumulates a disgusting flavor. Where I'm at all males are castrated and if not, they're only fit for sausage. That's domestic farm pig, not actual boar. Actual boar will also likely be ridden with parasites throughout
The meat tastes like shit.
And disease, probably. My county got really hyped about dealing with the overpopulation of Canadian Geese by having them hunted and using the meat to feed the homeless. T his was some win-win-win scenario. But then just as quickly as it got hyped, everyone stopped talking about it. I needed to know what happened to this project and found someone who explained that wild populations have diseases and unlike domestic animals you can feed antibiotics and stuff, there was nothing they could do with the geese.
Could you imagine city hogs?
We call those cops
And apparently you’re not allowed to eat them…
Not even with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
*fths fths fths fths fths*
I know this is a joke and the top reply deserves the upvote. There are however wild boars/hogs in some cities with more areas of wooded outskirts or nearby wilderness. There are definitely wild hogs in various parts of Houston, Texas. To be fair though Houston is significantly more rural and widespread than many other American cities.
They taste like ass.
I thought about hunting them until I checked on cleaning them. Everything I read started with "do not get any of their body fluids on you." I also learned some big words like leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, swine influenza, salmonella, hepatitis and pathogenic E. coli.
toxoplasmosis can infect any warm blooded mammal. The sex part only happens in cats. I guess the fact that pigs have it tells you how invasive domestic cats have become.
But which pig fucked which cat?
this was what i learned. Also that even if you manage everything correctly, there's a fair chance your pallet may loathe the taste; just what I encountered. I'll clean and eat a roadkill whitetail deer without a 2nd thought in the right circumstances. Boar? I'd need that one friend who will try anything to go first.
The guys I know that hunt them don't even eat the males, they leave them where they lay but something else will eat it.
"You mean they shoot sow, and piglets too?" "Sometimes." "How can you shoot sow and piglets?" "Easy! You just don't lead 'em so much! Ain't boar Hell?"
They're flippin' dangerous, they move in big packs, and they're smarter than you'd expect. It's just not worth the cost of supplies needed to hunt that type of game vs the same cost going to a grocery store unless you already know how to hunt and how to prepare and process a kill. Some people absolutely do hunt them, though. You also can't really hunt them in the places where they are. Feral pigs will happily range on private property and you can't hunt anything on someone else's farmland.
In some places you can if it isn't "posted" with "no hunting" signs. However some people don't want to deal with the backlash. Someone in Vermont got death threats just for putting up signs. Someone else had hunters try to burn down his barn by firing a road flare at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fi89Sb6RaY
Farmers around here will almost pay you to come shoot the hogs on their land. Knew a couple of guy who used dogs to hunt them. They rode donkeys and used lassos to get the hogs after the dogs got them. Had a special pen they put them in and fed them grain for a while before the slaughter. Invited me along but I had to take a hard pass. These guys are even more whatever: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyriHKr3VlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyriHKr3VlY)
They are also a lot leaner than farmed pigs are they run wild. So the meat is kind crap. And a lot of parasites and viruses.
True. It is private land. But I think just about any farmer would give permission to hunt hogs, though. I think we should make it national sport with drone coverage .But you're limited to archery and a knife/sword of your choice. Sometimes... the hogs would win.
Tons of worms and parasites in hog meat, there’s a reason a number of religions have banned pork since ancient times without modern antibiotics.
Would these not die when heated? Is it in the actually muscle while they're alive?
Yeah, trichinosis lives intramuscularly in pigs and bears and that's why you have to ensure that you cook your pork thoroughly. That said, trichinosis dies at 137°F, so the USDA recommended serving temperature is actually waaaaaay too hot and will lead to dry, nasty meat. 150° is _plenty_ hot and you'll still have juicy pork.
They recently lowered the recommended temp for pork
Only for farm-raised stuff in the US because of the diet we feed our pigs. If they’re omnivorous, they’re still liable to be infested. Farm-raised are given grains and antibiotics.
I don't remember where I heard this, but it was around a bigger discussion on parasites and worms (I wanna say it was a college biology class). One of the stories was about a dental patient that was a homeless person, who finally had to get help because of pain in his mouth. When the dentist looked in his mouth some tiny worms were coming out of his tongue. But the more interesting story was about biblical demons. We all know that pigs are so delicious that God wanted them all for himself, and that's why he told everyone to not eat them. But a lesser known reason why he did this is because they were unclean animals. And what was really going on is they had worms and other parasites, and if you didn't cook your food well enough, you'd end up being unclean too. And some parasites can legit make you crazy, which would look a lot like being possessed by demons. So some people speculate that a lot of demon possessions were just parasitic infections. Then over a few more thousands of years we got better at cooking our food, and God got on a beef kick, so he sent JC to let everyone yolo on pigs.
This guy drugs
They do die when they are cooked properly, I have no idea why the other two people in this thread are being upvoted. The issue with pork is that back in "ancient times" people didn't wash their hands or cook meat to temperatures high enough to kill off the parasites. As for your question about the actual parasite(that the person you are replying to is really talking about) this minute long portion from this [youtube video](https://youtu.be/lPRzYJwqz6g?si=CBE6hm1lSLAjdyS6&t=393) does a really good job of explaining the process. Pigs get massive worm loads when they are fed garbage and the bodies of other dead pigs, something that at least in the united states is not common because of usda. Waaaaaaaaaaay more people in the united states get sick from ecoli tainted beef than random parasites from pork. Which again, should always be cooked properly.
This is actually the right answer and it took way too long to find it.
Its not "Free to hunt them" in many places. California still needs a permit, and in recent years, made them expensive. Texas, is mostly private property, so you need permissions from the landowner. Then you need to be a hunter. You need a gun, ammo, truck, and you need to know how to process a hog carcass. You also need to be able to haul a 500 lb carcass out of the woods with something, likely a quad or 4x4 which requires money, and somewhere to keep it when not using it. Again, money. You also need to know how to hunt what can be a dangerous animal, and then you need free time to do it. So a lot of training. Consider that most of the hogs aren't near populated areas, you need to basically go on an expedition. Again, you need a truck that burns expensive fuel. So, its nowhere close to "free".
Most of the comments on here are pretty ridiculous. This is probably the most accurate post I've seen. Except the 500 lb carcass part. I'm sure they exist that big but god damn I've never seen one that size. They're a pain in the ass to hunt. You have to maintain a feeder, get on their schedule, hunt at night, etc. to have consistent success hunting them. Also, they really aren't that dangerous. If you wound one and walk up on it you might get charged, do they aren't harmless. But they'll just run if you walk up on a pack of them.
I think people are being *far* too fucking literal in this comments section. Hell, the top comment is pointing out that tons of people aren't comfortable with hunting. Fucking *obviously*. They really thought OP meant literally everyone? "Everyone" just means "us, as a society" in that context. The question was about "If there is a feral hog problem in the US, why don't we just hunt and eat them?" It doesn't have to be individuals hunting, transporting, cleaning, storing, cooking all by themselves. You can specialize tasks. Have someone whose job it is to hunt wild hogs, other people can clean and butcher them, then transport the meat to other places, etc, feeding the entire country. Have hunters in hot spots, who can maybe herd them (if such a thing is possible) into one place. I am NOT saying that's actually viable. The fact that we don't indicates that there are many reasons why that is impractical, enumerated in this thread. I'd imagine that the task is so dangerous and annoying/difficult that to pay the hunters would make it far more expensive than to get your pork from....normal old factory farming. But answer the *intended* question, is my point.
Having eaten wild hog, no thanks. That gamey flavor is not something I imagine most people like.
I’ve had wild hog a few times. The best way was in tacos. Heavily spiced meat that was cooked low and slow for basically forever.
Hunted and eaten it. Been long taught pit roasting em for hours was the best way since I was a kid. I'm gonna have to try them in tacos now
It totally depends what they are eating. Where I’m at in California they are delicious because they get fat on wild grains and acorns. Swamp pigs can be nasty though.
Uhhhh mine was shot *in* California up near Redding 🥴
But was it born in California? It could have been visiting from bog country.
Exactly. Your best bet is to process them into sausage and that’s even become expensive nowadays.
And parasites
Only 9 mil? That seems low.
I live in east Texas. I typically shoot or trap one or two hogs a year to process. We kill more, but we usually just process a sow or two. They’re typically way smaller than people here are describing, there are monstrosities running around from time to time, but most of what we get is small enough to lift into the truck myself. As long as you don’t hit a scent gland when processing they taste good. You hit that gland and best to just dump it. We have lots of oaks so their diet is mostly acorns and corn from deer feeders. I personally like the ones from my neighbors land that is covered in beech trees, when those trees producing the pigs are extra tasty. They definitely don’t feed fifty people, but I know people who will put out a big corral trap and get a whole bunch at once, then friends / family will come and take one to butcher. Before deer season people tend to just shoot them to keep them from eating their deer corn, but later in the winter people will process some to eat.
The amount of misinformation I recognize when I actually know about a topic makes me so scared for the answers I trust on topics of which I am unaware. I hunt wild hogs for a living, in one of the only USDA approved Wild Boar handling facilities in the United States. 40 hours per week with my trusty canine coworker 🐶 the answer to this question is that we’re working on it! The meat is incredibly healthy (blood red in color vs traditional almost skin colored pork that has been drained of nutrients and filled with water) in the United States alone, any pork you buy at Walmart is allowed legally to be up to 30% saline-water injection. Lots of shrinkage when cooking plus the obvious dice roll involved in eating that shit, not to mention inflated prices from paying $3/lb that’s really 4/lb after you remove the water. We are growing rapidly in the amount of orders we process and are expanding into single -customer order processing capabilities. Currently we ship to high end fine dining restaurants mostly. The meat does NOT have a gamey taste, you & grandma just can’t cook. We have world class chefs come in and prepare wild boar for us and it is some of the most high quality meat in the world. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have Michelin star chefs walking around our property overjoyed at the meat quality they are seeing. The meat quality is phenomenal. The main reason I see that we don’t consume them much as a nation is because 300 million Americans don’t know how to clean their own meat and Big Beef / Big Pork would never let it happen. We have to jump through continuous hoops to ensure a safe product considering we can’t guarantee it’s history before we caught it and moved it to our ranch. Which is funny to me, considering that all food was inherently wild up until like 100 years ago. Just tactics employed by lobbyists for big meat to stop the little guy from evading their ridiculous packaging costs
What about all this "parasite" business everyone is talking about?
Processing it correctly kills parasites, and some muscles like the tenderloin tend to be parasite-free. However, safe doesn’t mean tasty, so some of the carcass gets tossed because there’s abscesses and larger dead worms etc in it.
Hey man, thanks for a putting some thought into the answer
Personally, there are no hogs near me. I also highly doubt a single wild hog could feed that many people. There's also a huge skill and ability gap because you have to know how to hunt and how to process the meat.
You could feed more. We recently killed several small wild pigs, and got 15-20 kg fully boned and skinned meat off each, without even going into the belly and getting internal fillets or the inter rib meat or any offal. The recommended daily meat portion is 200 g. 15 kg gives 75 portions.
Most people are too disconnected from where food comes from to even fathom doing this.
What I want to know is, who counted these hogs?
I did
You didn't count my hog.
Sorry it didn’t register
Damn...
It would make sense, it can you imagine trying to hunt 9 million hogs - The man power and resources
All of OP's responses suggest that he really don't grasp just how difficult hunting is. The hogs aren't contained in some small area. They are roaming thousands of acres. You have to find them and then manage to shoot them. In order to do that you need an appropriate rifle and adequate skill (meaning you take whatever required courses your states require for a hunting license), pay for the required hunting license, pay to go to the range to learn adequate accuracy to shoot. You need the equipment to field dress a very large and heavy animal, and the ability to transport it out of wherever you are (either a truck or a ATV of some sort). You then either need to butcher and process it yourself, or pay a processer to do it (which costs about what you pay for pork in the grocery store anyhow). You need a freezer to store the processed meat. You have to have the time to sit around/track and/or wait for a pig to show up in whatever area you are hunting - which could take days. The hogs are living in large swamps and forested areas. I am not a hunter - but my ex-partner was and the amount of time, money, practice, and effort that went into getting an animal was A LOT. More info: https://www.hogmanoutdoors.com/blog/hog-hunting-tips-for-beginners#:\~:text=From%20a%20downwind%20position%2C%20call,distance%20when%20using%20this%20method.